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Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Rock Art from the Mongolian Altai: the Material and Its Cultural Implications

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Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Rock Art from the Mongolian Altai: the Material and Its Cultural Implications Arts 2013, 2, 151-181; doi:10.3390/arts2030151 OPEN ACCESS arts ISSN 2076-0752 www.mdpi.com/journal/arts Article Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Rock Art from the Mongolian Altai: The Material and its Cultural Implications Esther Jacobson-Tepfer Department of Art History, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-5229 USA ; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +1-541-344-3497 Received: 9 August 2013; in revised form: 10 September 2013 / Accepted: 11 September 2013 / Published: 18 September 2013 Abstract: Rock-pecked images from the northern Mongolian Altai attest to the presence of human communities within the high valleys of that region during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. The material provides evidence that is hitherto largely missing from the archaeological record of that region. This paper reviews the rock art, its find sites and larger physical contexts and uses evidence from paleoenvironmental studies to propose dating and cultural significance. The material is compared with other sites said to have Paleolithic imagery from Mongolia and the adjoining Russian Altai. The body of presented material offers a major resource for the study of early hunter-gatherer communities at the interface of Central and North Asia. Keywords: Pleistocene; Holocene; Paleolithic; Mesolithic; mammoth; rhinoceros; ostrich; aurochs; Altai Mountains; Mongolia 1. Introduction Tsagaan Salaa II (TS II) is part of the huge Tsagaan Salaa-Baga Oigor (TS-BO) petroglyphic complex in northwestern Mongolia (Map 1). Rising above the north bank of the Tsagaan Salaa River, the slopes of TS II are steep and covered with boulders and outcrops. One outcrop, near the section’s ridgeline, is now almost completely fractured. Its few intact surfaces are scraped and polished, distantly reflecting the action of the ancient glaciers that filled the Tsagaan Salaa valley in the late Pleistocene up to an elevation of at least 200 m. Two images appear on these fragments. One of a wild mountain sheep known as argali is visible on the south edge of the outcrop while on the north side is found an image of uncertain identity (Figure 1). Despite their shared location, the images are as Arts 2013, 2 152 different in conception and execution as they are in type. Although unfinished, the argali is executed in a naturalistic manner. By contrast, the massive body of the second has been defined by a roughly pecked contour of uneven width. The animal’s legs are almost vestigial—its front legs indicated by a wide band while its hind legs are indicated by a short, inverted cone shape. The animal has neither horns nor antlers; this lack suggests that it, also, was never finished. While the argali bears the marks of an early Bronze Age date, the unidentified animal of TS II can be described as archaic in appearance and execution. Map 1. Complex Sections, Tsagaan Salaa-Baga Oigor Petroglyphic Complex, Bayan Ölgiy, Mongolia. Figure 1. Unidentified animal, Tsagaan Salaa II (http://oregondigital.org/u?maic,714). Arts 2013, 2 153 Similarly archaic in appearance are many other images in the Mongolian Altai. This simple image thus raises a number of questions. What criteria may we confidently use to distinguish rock-pecked imagery of the Altai Mountains dating to a period earlier than the Bronze Age? How can we determine whether that material belongs to the late Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs? Across which sites is the relevant imagery located and how do those sites relate to the larger physical context? Considered within its physical and paleoenvironmental contexts, can this material illuminate the history of human culture in the mountainous heart of Eurasia? In raising and pursuing these questions, I wish the reader to bear in mind a number of qualifications regarding the identification of the animals represented and the dates to which they are assigned. In all cases, identification is based on my carefully considered judgment formed from extensive experience with these and hundreds of comparative images and, in many cases, with those animal species that have survived to the present. In addition, I have not hesitated to turn to scientific authority to support my hypotheses regarding species identification. To a certain extent, of course, dating is subjective; but where there are clear correlations between species and constraining environmental conditions (as discussed extensively below), tentative dates are, I believe, justified. Finally, in the vast majority of cases referred to here, the stone on which the images are pecked is metagreywacke (sandstone). 2. Geographical and Cultural Contexts The body of rock-pecked imagery to be considered here is located in the Altai Mountains of northwestern Bayan Ölgiy aimag, where Mongolia meets the southern edge of Russia’s Altai Republic and northern China (Map 2). The relevant concentrations of rock art include the small site of Aral Tolgoi [1] and the large complexes of Upper Tsagaan Gol (sometimes referred to as Shiveet Khairkhan) [2] and Tsagaan Salaa-Baga Oigor [3]. With the exception of the animal from TS II, the images to be considered here are specific with regard to faunal species. Moreover, with reference to their technique of execution and style of presentation they differ radically from well-known and documented rock art of the Bronze Age or even that associated with a Neolithic or Eneolithic period. The following pages will document these assertions; but it is necessary to first state an equally absolute qualification. Although a vast amount of work has been done on Epipaleolithic and Neolithic sites in South Siberia [4–6], northern and eastern Mongolia and the Mongolian Gobi region [7], there has to date been no relevant published documentation of such sites within the Mongolian Altai. The closest relevant sites are all found a considerable distance away, in the Katun and Biya river drainages of the Russian Altai [4,5,8]. This does not mean that analogous Mongolian sites do not exist. On the contrary, even cursory surveys by the author and colleagues have revealed considerable evidence of Paleolithic habitation along the Khovd River as well as in all the high valleys referred to here—those of Aral Tolgoi, Tsagaan Gol, and Baga Oigor. This evidence includes a range of artifacts including scrapers, points, blades, nuclei and microblades; all artifacts, however, lay on the surface of the ground, testimony to the extreme deflation of cultural layers in this part of the world. In short, at the moment it is not possible to reconstruct an Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic stratigraphy within this region on the basis of excavated artifacts and settlement patterns. On the other hand, the northern Mongolian Altai offers one of the richest resources for the study of rock art in North Asia and also one Arts 2013, 2 154 of the best preserved. The oldest material from that tradition illuminates early human culture in this heartland of Eurasia. Map 2. Selected Rock Art Complexes of the Northern Mongolian Altai. 3. Methods, Discussion 3.1. Traditional Approaches to the Dating of Petroglyphic Imagery Scholars have used a number of approaches to the dating of rock pecked imagery with varying success. Some have attempted to infer the dating of stone images on the basis of excavated materials in the immediate vicinity; but there is no necessary connection between the two. Indeed, the dating of organic materials recovered from nearby burials or ritual structures can be quite misleading. No less problematic is the frequent tendency to use materials gathered from ethnographically attested cultures to both date and explain imagery. Direct dating of petroglyphic imagery is also of dubious value. The exploitation of organic materials embedded within an image’s pecked area—what one scholar has referred to as the “intra-coating detritus” [9]—offers no good assistance in dating an image. Cemented, as it may be within the microlaminations of the rock surface—or even within the pecked areas of a particularly old image—that material is notoriously capable of offering corrupted dates. No more certain are the bacterial materials associated with iron/manganese oxyhydroxide encrustations that gradually develop on stone surfaces under specific climatic conditions [10] since these, also, involve substances from vastly different periods. In effect, the organic matter deposited within the grooves of an image or the bacterial accumulations on the surface of the stone could significantly pre-date or post-date that image. Some scholars have resorted to the relative darkness of patina and surface weathering in order to propose a hypothetical age for a particular image. Within the Mongolian Altai, such attempts are not Arts 2013, 2 155 reliable. Careful examination of the vast number of ornamented surfaces within the large complexes of that region makes clear that patina is as much a function of mineralization of the stone, surface tension (i.e., the slant of the surface), adjoining vegetation and proximity to moisture as it is a function of age. Images from the early Iron Age found on a vertical surface can be as light as images done in the Turkic period [11] or, because of the slant of their rock surface they can reflect the process of re-patination that occurred over a long period of time [12]. Far more useful is the observation of overlaid images, the differences in their re-patination and the cultural indicators of detail. In many cases, indeed, those layers of imagery are decisive indicators of relative dating. There are few such cases involving archaic imagery, but one surface from Baga Oigor II (BO II) offers a useful example of how even in such cases one must look very carefully to understand the overlay in detail (Figure 2). Figure 2. Archaic aurochs overlaid by Iron Age goats. Baga Oigor II. (http://boundless.uoregon.edu/u?/maic,1076).
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